KYC / KYB
Know Your Customer and Know Your Business — the identity and business checks a licensed institution is required to perform before opening a merchant account. In practice: business registration, identification for the people who own and control the business, and evidence of what the business actually sells. There is no regulated merchant account in Singapore that skips them.
Why it matters to a merchant
This is why onboarding asks for documents that feel unrelated to taking a card payment. The checks are a licensing obligation rather than a preference, so no provider can skip them — and a provider offering to is telling you something. What a merchant can control is preparation: having ACRA details, identification and ownership structure ready is most of the difference between days and weeks.
Read more: Getting a merchant account in Singapore: documents, timeline and what gets checked
Where this comes up
Pages on this site that deal with this in context:
- Getting a merchant account in Singapore: documents, timeline and what gets checked
- Opening in Singapore: taking payment as a China-headquartered brand
- Switching payment provider without breaking a weekend
- How to accept WeChat Pay and Alipay in Singapore
- Acquirer, gateway, PSP: what the words actually mean
- Alipay and Alipay+ in Singapore
Related terms
In this section: Licensing and regulation in Singapore
- MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore)
- Payment Services Act 2019
- MPI (Major Payment Institution)
- SPI (Standard Payment Institution)
- MAS Financial Institutions Directory
- Beneficial owner
- PCI DSS
- Merchant Acquisition (licensed activity)
- UEN (Unique Entity Number)
- ACRA
- PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act)
- AML / CFT